The filmmakers behind Salt, out July 23, say they wanted their spy movie to be fun and realistic. Just how close did they get? We talk to experts to find out.

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Just a few months ago, the plot of Salt, out July 23, might have seemed like something out of the Cold War: Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie), a decorated CIA agent, is accused of being a Russian spy and must go on the run to prove her innocence. But thanks to the recent bust of a Russian sleeper spy ring in the United States, the film seems as though it was ripped straight from the headlines—and serves as an important reminder that terrorists aren't the only threat to U.S. security. Salt's filmmakers say they went to great pains to get the lives of spies, the technical details of espionage and even the fight sequences right. But just how close did they get to reality?

Director Phillip Noyce acknowledges that much of Salt is a popcorn action flick. "It's absolutely pure escapism," he says. "At the same time, [we wanted to] make the audience really believe in the texture of the movie. So [we said], let's make all the technical aspects really realistic and let's do our research, which numbered thousands of pages." He even insisted that the actors spend time with real CIA agents, some in deep cover, some retired. "What I wanted to do was to ground the characters in reality, allow the audience to really believe in them, and then set them in a popcorn context, so that you could have fun but take it seriously at the same time," Noyce says.

"We spent a lot of time with different people who'd worked in Russia House and the CIA," Jolie says. "I think the biggest note I took from them was how isolated and lonely they felt not being able to talk about their life and their work with anybody in their family. And what a sacrifice that is. That informed a lot."

To further enhance the film's realism, Noyce hired former CIA operative Melissa Mahle, who was with the agency for 14 years and served in the Middle East, to act as a technical advisor on Salt. Mahle weighed in on the script, tweaking the story line, technical aspects and visuals so they were correct. "As correct as Hollywood wants them to be," Mahle says. "Because certainly Hollywood wants to be much more interesting and spectacular than maybe what the real spy world is." She also served as a source for Jolie. "She was very professional and focused," Mahle says of the actress. "She wanted to get her mind emotionally around this role. And it was very important to her to be real. What would I really be faced with? How fast would this unfold? She was very concerned about the pace of the development, how she would respond, what her considerations and concerns would be, but all in the context of if she was a real CIA officer."

According to Mahle, the early versions of the script she saw were pretty unrealistic. "It's a very thin line to walk, because you don't want to tell somebody that the whole script will just never happen," she says. "So I was trying to help delineate areas in which they could get very real, and other areas in which they could go Hollywood. And I tried to always point out this would not happen, it would happen X way or Y way, so he had a sense of how wide the margins were."

One scene Mahle says is particularly realistic is the walk-in—when a Russian defector comes into the CIA offices to reveal that Salt is a spy. "It captures the emotional content, and also visually it plays well," Mahle says. "The mechanics of how it goes down are actually pretty good. That doesn't mean that it doesn't go a little bit Hollywood in terms of technology, but I think that it was a pivotal moment in the movie just like it is a pivotal moment in espionage."

The technology Mahle is referring to is an fMRI machine, which agents use to determine whether or not the walk-in is lying. The machines are real, and both scientists and doctors are currently using them to research how the brain responds to lying, fear, marketing and more—but they're not quite at the level Salt portrays. "There was no point in making an issue out of that because that's a piece of technology that's in train," Mahle says. "And I think when it gets to the point where they consider it to be reliable and they can deploy it operationally, that'll be great. But meanwhile, that's okay, let it be out there as something for Hollywood to frame."

Salt also relies on her DIY know-how, rewiring systems to access rooms and even building an improvised explosive device (IED) in what the actress calls her MacGyver scene. "I laughed through that whole scene," Jolie says. "I felt like making MacGyver music. We actually took one or two elements out of the bomb building so it couldn't be recreated—just so people know—but with a few extra elements, yeah, that's one [new skill I picked up]. You learn the oddest things when you're an actor." While the CIA does have operatives who specialize in IEDs and identifying bomb signatures, Mahle says that wasn't part of her training—but the scenario does have hints of realism. "Would I have been able to do that? No," she says. "Are we trained to exploit our environment all the time? Yes."

As a result of Mahle's input and Noyce's determination to keep it at least partially real, Salt is peppered with realistic details: Mahle says that if her days as a spy were anything like Salt's or Bond's, she'd be exhausted—or dead. "Generally speaking, in the world of espionage, when things start blowing up, it means somebody's made a mistake," she says. "We live in the shadows and we don't like to be caught out in the limelight. So when things blow up, everybody pays attention and then it's very hard to disappear. So that aspect, the kinetic aspect of the unrelenting danger and attacks and the chases, I think that's certainly an exaggeration of reality. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but it happens in much smaller segments. Espionage is 90 percent chess and only 10 percent of what you think of as high-speed, kinetic stuff."

But even if a real spy's life has fewer explosions than a typical espionage film, Mahle says it's still much, much better for one very important reason. "Hollywood captures one image of what espionage is," Mahle says. "But there's nothing like the feeling when you're running an operation and it's all coming together. You're gonna get the right goods, you're going to steal the secret, or you're going to take down that bad guy. And the real impact of it—you've changed reality. It's so much better."